Industrial Gears

The frame is still standing. A heavy steel structure, triangular in section, carries a gear housing fitted with multiple toothed helical gears locked together at rest. A tall central chute rises through the assembly. The columns are solid, the metalwork substantial, built for continuous load rather than occasional use. Rust has worked into every surface. Debris and dust cover the floor beneath. Whatever drove this machinery stopped a long time before the photograph was made. The building around it has a layered history. Davies Coop & Co. Ltd, a vertically integrated Australian cotton firm that spun in Adelaide and wove in Sydney, began developing this dyeing and finishing plant in Yarraville in 1952. The work was tied to an agreement with the Bradford Dyers' Association Ltd of England, giving Davies Coop exclusive Australian rights to the "Rigmel" shrink-control process through a wholly owned subsidiary, Davies Coop (B.D.A.) Pty. Ltd. By 1954, the company reported its new West Footscray dye house was nearing completion on 40 acres purchased at the site. The complex that grew around it became one of the largest textile operations in Melbourne's West Footscray and Brooklyn industrial belt. Later, the site operated under the Bradmill name, producing denim and workwear fabric. Textile operations ceased around 2001, as tariff protection wound back and cheaper imports undercut domestic manufacture. The site was vacated around 2007, and through the late 2000s and into the 2010s the empty interiors accumulated rust, graffiti, and the slow return of dust. This photograph was made in 2011, during the years the building stood dormant between industry and redevelopment. The gear assembly it records is a detail inside a factory now largely gone, the site subsequently taken on by Frasers Property Australia and Irongate for a mixed-use residential precinct. The heritage-listed boiler house and proofing building were retained. Most of the machinery was not.